Chapter 33
THIRTY-THREE
JINX
“I have to say, it’s such a breath of fresh air to be able to talk about this with you without feeling as though you try to hit on me.”
I glance from my phone to the woman seated across from me, and frown. Is she for real? Sure, she’s damn good-looking, but does she rate herself that highly that she thinks every man who sits down for coffee with her wants in her suit pants?
“Sounds like a relief, for sure.” I return focus to the message I tap out to Kyra.
Can I call you in fifteen or are you still busy?
Throughout everything Ms. Larson has said, all I can think about is what the hell Kyra could have done that would have meant she had to leave without waking me up or saying goodbye.
Isn’t that what I wanted, though? To avoid the difficult shit? Why does it sting so bad, then?
“Are you gay?”
I snap my head up. “The fuck?”
Rowan lifts her slender hands. “Sorry. I’m just trying to figure you out.”
“Because I don’t want to hit on you?”
She blinks. She’s fucking serious.
“Is it really that bad with men for you, or have you just managed to get everywhere in life so far by opening your legs?”
Her lips roll, and she stares down at the table, jaw hard. “Do you want to know why I became a lawyer?”
“Sure.”
“Because at my first job as an intern at a consulting firm, a colleague assaulted me after I turned him down several times. So yes, it really is that bad.”
I lean back in my chair and study her, gauging the truth of it. The vacancy in her gaze tells me what I need to know. “I apologize.”
“It’s fine.” She gathers her satchel and sets it on her lap. “I’ll put in a bail petition tomorrow and let you know the result. But at this stage, I can’t see them putting Crow before a judge until after Christmas. They’ll use the holiday shutdown to their advantage.”
“Wouldn’t expect much different.”
She draws a deep breath before asking, “Did he do it?”
I hold her gaze. “Does it matter? We hired you to make the charges as small as possible.”
“If you want me to work to my best potential, then yes, it does matter. I need absolute trust between myself and your club for this to work.”
“Let me know how much we have to pay to have him home for the holidays.”
She sighs out her nose and then rises from the chair. “Think about it. I’m not the enemy here; they are.” Her heels click as she makes her way up the narrow passage to the central part of the cafe, the bell over the door ringing shortly after.
I rest both elbows on the table and bury my fingers in my hair, staring down at the stained surface.
Chaos fucked up. He held the gun to the side of Pits’s head and pulled the goddamn trigger, which means it’ll be a challenge for Rowan to argue it was self-defense.
We protect our president at all costs, but damn, this shit isn’t fair to Crow.
He’s one of our most loyal members, always doing as he’s asked without causing trouble.
And now he faces a fucking long time behind bars.
“So, if the problem isn’t me, is it her?”
I snap my head up and come face-to-face with the sum of my impending mental breakdown. It’s so much easier to fuck my life over when it’s only me I have to care about.
“What are you talking about?”
Kyra stands a few feet from the table, her under-eye dark and mouth turned down. “She’s pretty.”
“She’s Crow’s lawyer.”
A small twitch, the slightest widening of her eye. But no apology for jumping to conclusions. “Oh.”
“Great to know that’s what you think of me.” I rise from the table and walk past her.
She catches my arm. “We’re not done.”
As much as it pains me to do so, I look down at her, counting the pale freckles on the tip of her nose. “Aren’t we?”
“Sit down, Matthew.”
Girl means business. “I don’t have time.” Fuck finding out why she left—her attitude tells me all I need to know.
“You make time, or you spend the rest of your life wondering.”
“Wondering what?”
Kyra releases my arm and moves for the table. “How much better life might have been if you let yourself trust me.”
Jesus Christ. I was not prepared for today when I got out of bed. “Fine.” I take the seat I’d just vacated. “You have ten minutes.”
Her gaze narrows, and she jumps her chair closer to mine before saying, “I have as long as this takes.”
I lift my eyebrows and urge her to continue. Even when we’re mad at each other, she manages to make me love her even more.
Kyra sighs. “I would have rather discussed this somewhere more private, but I get the feeling that if I’d let you walk away, things would have gotten more and more awkward between us to the point we never would have talked at all.”
She’s not wrong there. Avoidance 101. Ignore the topic until it becomes obsolete.
“I think I have an idea why,” she says, turning in her seat to face me. “But I want to hear it from you. Why do you avoid sex?”
Swear to god, all my blood just drained to my feet and out the soles of my boots. Damn, woman. “Who says I do?”
Kyra tilts her head, eyebrows raised as though to say, “Are you fucking serious?” “Last night does. The club bunnies you apparently deny do. The fact that nobody has seen you with anyone for a long, long time does. Shall I go on?”
Why the fuck do we have to be so drawn to each other when we’re so different? She’s comfortable with her sexuality. Finds talking about this shit easy.
I avoid it at any cost—even happiness.
“What do you want me to say, Kyra?” Head tilted back, I cover my face with my hands and groan. “Nothing will fix it.”
“Because burying your head in the sand has worked wonders so far.”
I throw my hands down and pin her with a hard fucking stare. “You nagging at me about it isn’t much better.”
“I’m not nagging,” she shouts before glancing to the rest of the cafe and lowering her voice. “I’m trying to help you.” Her teeth catch her lip. “Help us.”
“I can’t be helped.”
“Says who?” she snaps. “Have you seen a doctor about it?”
My attention flicks straight back to her. She asked what? Has she got this figured out? “No. Don’t need to.”
“Bullshit.” A storm brews behind her eyes.
“You make yourself miserable, Matthew. Push away anyone who cares. Hell, I might not be the first woman you’ve broken the heart of, but I’ll fucking be the last.” She glances away and swallows, calming her shit.
“Do something about it. If not for me, for you.”
If not for me. Whether she knows it or not, she cemented the very reason I know this will ruin us. Because if I can’t be fixed, then there’s nothing between us. I can’t keep her happy, and she’ll never be satisfied as long as I keep her trapped with me.
“You want kids, Kyra. I can’t give you that.”
Her jaw tics. “You choose not to give me that.” She huffs before muttering, “I can’t believe we talk about starting a family when you won’t even put in the effort to love me.”
A strange pain flashes through my chest. I lift a hand to the sting and rub it away, but it refuses to leave. “Of course, I love you. I’ve fucking loved you even when you weren’t here, Kyra. Don’t you dare fucking tell me I don’t care enough to love you.”
Her eyebrows shoot skyward. “I’m sitting here, telling you I want this, Jinx.
Begging you to set your pride aside and seek help for what is a completely fixable issue, and you’re refusing to change.
So yeah, I will tell you that you don’t care enough.
Because if you did, you’d fucking kiss me and promise you’ll make a doctor’s appointment before telling me we’re going home. ”
I grab the sides of her chair and jerk it around to face me, forcing her legs between mine.
She stiffens, yet holds my gaze as I lean in close enough to catch her intoxicating scent of wildflowers in the summer.
Close enough that my goddamn tongue remembers how it tastes to kiss her. Begs to do as she said.
“Do you have any idea how it feels to question why you’re not man enough?
What the fuck you did to deserve being stripped of something so goddamn basic as the right to give your partner pleasure?
” I pause, searching for the best way to make her understand.
“It’d be bad enough for any man, but when you’re part of a goddamn one-percent club.
” It’s fucking laughable, it’s so ironic.
“It’s like admitting you don’t even like bikes. ”
“Are you seriously asking me if I know how it feels not to be enough?” She glances over my shoulder, eyes growing glassy with emotion.
“I left this morning so I could go straighten things out with my father, and you know what happened? He told me I’m a disappointment and a whore and kicked me out, even though I’m leaving soon anyway, just so that he could remain in control.
So yeah, I know how it feels not to be enough and to question why.
What the fuck you did in life to deserve such a bad run.
” Her gaze returns to mine, Kyra fighting the tears that long to break free.
“I don’t want you to seek help purely so we can fuck, Matthew.
We can do that without the use of your dick.
I have toys. You have fingers and a tongue.
I want you to get help so you can stop shutting me out and denying us both the thing we fucking need to survive: love. ”
She holds my gaze, despite the pain. Despite the doubt swirling in her darkened irises.
I measure my next words so as not to inflame the situation worse than it already is. “He called you what?”
“A whore, Matthew.” She chuckles, but it’s bitter. Sad. “That’s the fucking irony of it. I always thought wanting you would be the thing that destroyed my relationship with my father, but no, it was choosing myself that did it.”
With every fuck up I made, every stupid decision, there was one thing I could say Mongrel never did, and that was disown me.
No matter what I did, no matter how badly he tore strips off me for not using my brain and thinking shit through first, he was always there to support me.
To bail me out. Stand up for me, even when I was wrong.
As shit of a parent he was, he never stopped caring about me, his child.
Fucking Marty. What the fuck goes through that man’s head? How the hell could he think calling his daughter names and belittling her is helpful? Does he not feel the same pain as I do when he looks at her fighting her tears, when he sees the hurt reflected at him in her shimmering eyes?
“I don’t know how this can work,” she whispers, still avoiding eye contact. “But I’ve done everything I can for you. The ball’s in your court now.”
Her chair gently scrapes, but the sound may as well be carving lines across my heart for how it feels.
I know what I should say. That I should promise to get my issues checked out, but that’s only the start of the roadblocks we’ve yet to clear to make it anywhere as a couple.
Sometimes you’ve got to know when you’re beaten.
Sometimes you need to recognize when it’s not the right time to add the complication to your life.
And that’s why I stay silent as she gives me one last look and then walks away, head held high.
Because no matter how many times I tell her I love her—that I’ve always wanted nobody else but her—I’m still a King of Anarchy.
A man facing the realities of life on the other side of the law, hoping that come next year, I’ll still be here to do this again.
And with that comes danger.
Danger, I want her nowhere near.